Like in the old days of English literature when books had really long phrased OR titles:
The Debacle of Empty-Bucket Words
OR
How I Learned to Love Humpty-Dumpty
by Shoving the Egg-Head of a “God” off the Wall
OR
How I Learned to Stop Using the Vacuous, Empty-Headed Term, “Love”
Preface:
“Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
http://sabian.org/looking_glass6.php
First, the last. I suppose for centuries, “love” has been empty-headed, empty-bucketed, meaning whatever any one in changing centuries applied to the term. Like all words, “love” that chameleon’d-squiggled-word changes in time and place and comes to mean whatever any particular human means it to mean.
Need I give many examples from history, literature, and media, especially movies, to show how ambiguous, contradictory, and empty-bucketed, “love” has been?
Heck, even Christian leaders can’t agree. Millions of them disagree about what “God is love” means. And some leaders get etymological, scholarly, and cite Greek, speaking of the over-inflated word, “agape.” But even in Greek, they don’t agree! (It's Greek to me;-)
Because even then they often mean something entirely different from other Christians.
For instance, Augustinian-Reformed Christians claim that God both loves and predetermines billions of humans to eternal damnation. What?! How could God lovingly torture billions of humans for ever?
And God "loves" some humans so much, he wills for them to get cancer, die in car accidents, drown, burn to death, and so forth!
OR take a look at how the Anabaptist leader Chuck McKnight claims that multiple sexual partner relationships—polyamory--are based in “love,” in “agape-love”!
According to McKnight, and others, the only rule of Christianity is “love.”
We've heard this before!
Paul Tillich, the famous Protestant theologian claimed, "Love is the ultimate law” while himself committing adultery, etc.
Tillich, Systematic Theology, v. 1, p. 152
And Christian ethicist Joseph Fletcher wrote an infamous, controversial book, Situation Ethics, in 1966.
It closed with this view:
“When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the plane crew were silent. Captain Lewis uttered six words, "My God, what have we done?" Three days later another one fell on Nagasaki. About 152,000 were killed, many times more were wounded and burned, to die later. The next day Japan sued for peace. When deciding whether to use "the most terrible weapon ever known" the US President appointed an Interim Committee made up of distinguished and responsible people in the government. Most but not all of its military advisors favoured using it. Top-level scientists said they could find no acceptable alternative to using it, but they were opposed by equally able scientists. After lengthy discussions, the committee decided that the lives saved by ending the war swiftly by using this weapon outweighed the lives destroyed by using it and thought that the best course of action.”
Supposedly, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians was more loving in the long run and therefore more justified!
Whew…Talk about Orwellian…yes, war is peace, hate is love, slaughter is kindness…
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LOOK at this STRANGE DIALOGUE BETWEEN JOSEPH FLETCHER AND A CONTRARY CHRISTIAN LEADER:
"This book is a transcript of the February 11, 1971 dialogue between Montgomery and Joseph Fletcher (who wrote Situation Ethics: The New Morality). Here are a few examples of their exchanges:
FLETCHER: "I think there are no normative moral principles whatsoever which are intrinsically valid or universally obliging.... If we are, as I would want to reason, obliged in conscience sometimes to tell white lies, as we often call them, then in conscience we might be obliged sometimes to engage in
white thefts
and white fornications
and white killings
and white breakings of promises
and the like." (pg. 15)
FLETCHER: “I want to suggest that methodologically there are basically only three alternatives strategies… the three options open to conscience at work are to be simply labeled as legalism, antinomianism, and situationism… In between these [first] two extremes lies situationism… and a mediating position in the spectrum. The situationist enters into troubling moral situations armed… [with] some reflective generalizations about what is ordinarily and typically the right thing to do. But unlike the legalist he refuses to absolutize … any normative principle… he is prepared to depart from a usually applicable generalization if in the particular case the consequence of following the rule is to minimize rather than to optimize … the first-order value to which he’s committed.” (Pg. 19, 23-24)
MONTGOMERY: “The insurmountable difficulty is simply this: there is no way… of knowing when the situationist is actually endeavoring to set forth genuine facts and true opinions, and when he is lying… Why? Because deception is allowed on principle … .as long as the ultimate aim is love. Consider: if Professor Fletcher acts consistently with his premises… he can to this end introduce any degree of factual misinformation, rhetorical pettifogging, or direct prevarication into the discussion… Our restatement goes: ‘If a situation ethicist … tells you that he is not lying, can you believe him?’… [This leaves] the audience entirely incapable of ever being sure that Professor Fletcher means what he says.” (Pg. 31-32)
MONTGOMERY: “This is precisely the claim of the historical Christian faith: that biblical revelation constitutes a transcendent word from God establishing ethical values once for all… Absolute moral principles are explicitly set forth; these inform love and guide its exercise.” (Pg. 44)
FLETCHER: “Are you saying, sir, that we must in conscience always tell the truth? And if there are exceptions, when might we prevaricate and why?... are you saying that tyrannicide is never justifiable? If it might be, when and why?... were you or weren’t you saying that interruptions of pregnancy are always wrong? But if there are times when it might be done, why would it be?... Christian ethics … have never allowed that human rights are anything but… relative and contingent.” (Pg. 49)
MONTGOMERY: “the greatest difficulty in situation ethics is revealed exactly at this point. The situation ethicist properly recognizes the ambiguity of situations and the extreme difficulty, often, in knowing what ought to be done; but he endeavors, in these situations, to JUSTIFY HIMSELF. In terms of the ethical approach that I outlined, one CANNOT so justify oneself. If, concretely, I were put in the position that you described of either informing a killer as to where a child was hidden or lying about it, it's conceivable that I would have to lie. But if I did so, I would be unable to justify this ethically; in short, I would be unable to get off the hook. In Christian terminology, I would have committed a sin which should drive me to the cross for forgiveness. This is what I find almost totally lacking in your writings: no one is driven to the Cross.” (Pg. 51)
FLETCHER: “you have said in reply to my question ‘Is it always wrong to have an abortion?’---‘Yes, it always is.’ It seems to me absolutely unbelievable that anybody could say that… Since the tragic complexities of life sometimes call us to do what we might call the ‘lesser evil,’ you WOULD be an instrument because the alternative to the abortion would be greater evil than the evil of the abortion.” (Pg. 52-53)
FLETCHER: “It is ethically foolish to say we ‘ought’ to do what is wrong! What I want to argue philosophically… is that the rightness or the wrongness of anything we do is extrinsic, relative, and dependent upon the circumstances, so that to have an abortion out of loving concern for everybody’s best interests involve, is not an excusably evil thing to do, but a good thing to do.” (Pg. 53-54)
FLETCHER: “And I have to say in all candor that when I examine the Gospel account of Jesus’ teaching in light of our question… he said nothing directly or even implicitly about it one way or another. Jesus was a simple Jewish peasant.
He had no more philosophical sophistication
than a guinea pig,
and I don’t turn to Jesus
for philosophical sophistication.” (Pg. 55)
MONTGOMERY: “Well, sir, I think that’s your trouble.” [Laughter and applause from the audience.] (Pg. 55)
FLETCHER: “Aren’t you in effect telling us that in your ethics we are sometimes morally obliged to do what is wrong, and does that make any sense in terms of ethical analysis?” [Applause from the audience.]
MONTGOMERY: “No, obviously it does not make any sense in terms of YOUR ethical analysis, but that’s what we are trying to determine---whether that ethical analysis is right… What I’m saying is that it may be necessary to choose a lesser of evils. But such a choice still remains an evil.” (Pg. 69-70) Situation ethics; true or false?: A dialogue between Joseph Fletcher and John Warwick Montgomery (Dimension books)
Quoted by reviewer Steven H. Propp on Amazon
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Even the word "LIGHT" means various contradictory things to different humans, including different Friends.
No, we can't escape semantics, so it behooves us to very carefully define words when we use them. And give very lucid examples.
Daniel Wilcox
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